“We were beating them back!” War raged. “Send us out there, we can protect you!”
“This is only a skirmish,” Tierra said. “I can feel the earth in pain. The broken seal is rending the world in two. We have to do something now. Something bigger than this.”
Aerin put a hand to her head, staring up at the moon. “I thought once the prophecy was fulfilled the answers would become clear. I thought our spell would fix things, not make them worse.”
Claire turned to Lucifer, who hovered outside the shield, her features gathering with the same darkness threatening to overtake their one last glowing ball of light. “What if this is how we fix it?” she pointed to the projection, which currently showed the black forest in flames.
“What?” Tierra gaped, aghast.
“Destruction is essential to rebirth,” Claire explained smoothing at the shimmering garment. “If I’ve learned anything as the fire druid, it’s that. Think about it, if we want to build a new world, we have to let the old one burn. It’s not an ending. It’s a beginning. A cataclysm between all of this shit-stained patriarchy, war, and oppression and what we’ve done to bend to it.”
Moira nodded in fervent agreement, her eyes catching with the same spark. “We’ve been through it all of this, together. Zombies, zealots, witch hunters, ex boyfriends, zombie ex boyfriends, poltergeists, bitch fights, witch fights, the devil and the prophecy. And through it all, I’ve always sensed, the only thing that could truly destroy us is ourselves. We are sisters and priestesses and lovers and women. We are rare and pure and somethin’ this world has never seen. We were chosen to bring about the apocalypse. So we get to fuckin’ decide what the apocalypse is. We get to build the world our children will protect and balance.”
Tierra put her head on Moira’s shoulder for a brief hug. “You’re right. So wise. We were born to do this, but we fought it because of fear. Beneath that fear, was a knowing. Something more is out there. Something better. Something beyond what we imagined. We are wild creatures of this earth, and we’ve silenced the instinct within us. We have a knowing in here.” She held her fist to her gut. “Inside of us. We are all born to bring something forth into this world. Perhaps we were born to set that free.”
“What about all this?” Aerin pointed to the horror film still playing in the sky. “All of this hatred and conquest, war and pestilence and yes. Even death.” She turned to the horsemen. “What if you are the enemy? Not as men, not even as horsemen, but what you stand for? What you’ve been forced to become. To do to others.” That knowing rose within her wild and terrifying. “What if…we are fated not only to love you. But to stop you.”
For a moment, time stood still.
Julian looked deep into her eyes, and whatever he saw there held him in thrall. His features softened and the trust that glimmered in his liquid gaze filled her with a sky full of grace. “What do you propose we do?”
“We change our skies,” Aerin whispered, thinking of Vian’s note. “We change our skies, so you can touch the world.”
“Come again?” Conquest looked at her as if she’d lost her mind.
Aerin expounded. “What if the Goddess is not a singular being of creation? What if she is not above us in a heaven, or below us in the earth. But…within us? Perhaps she is the warmth, the compassion and the liquid fire inside of us. Perhaps she is unseen because she is us. We have known, instinctively, that the way things are is unsustainable because she has been lost. And we all know, when we are silent and alone, that there is a better way. A way where every voice is heard, and every life is equal. I don’t want to live in a world where conquest is the only way to victory. Where warlords reign with fear and violence. Where our children suffer from famine, privation, and illness while so many of us have too much. I no longer want to live in a world where people die before their time. Where people exist, but do not live. It was all meant to be more beautiful than this. We cannot wait for death or the promises of the other world. Nor give ourselves over to it. We have to birth it here and now. Together.” She stared up at each one of the mounted horsemen challenging them to understand. “We must change not who you are, but what you are.”
“What would become of us?” Killian asked, his brow crimped with befuddlement.
Aerin shook her head, a weighty grief weighing her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Oh for the love,” Moira konked her head with her palm as if she’d just gotten a puzzling joke. “Hope will be your gift. So, he may mend the rift!” she exclaimed. “It makes sense now.
“You will win the day. So he can light the way,” Claire murmured.
“You will hold the ground. So his soul is no longer bound.” Tierra locked eyes with Killian. “No longer bound to her. To death. To anything but us.”
“That’s the hope.” Aerin said. “I’m sorry, but we have to destroy you Conquest, War, Pestilence, and Death. Together.”
Horses stomped and snorted. The men in their saddles sitting straight and proud their weapons aloft. They shared a long look, holding a silent conclave.
Aerin caught her breath and stood against the man she loved, but she didn’t waver.
It terrified her that she might lose him.
Julian threw one leg over his raven black horse and slid to the ground. He held the scales in one hand and lance in the other.
“Together,” he whispered. Kneeling, he laid both of his weapons at her feet. “Together with the sky above us.”
Conquest’s boots hit the earth and he marched toward Moira clutching his bow with knuckles turned white with rage. His eyes burned into hers with the force of his disbelief and something dangerous and indefinable. Taking an arrow from his quiver, he stood in front of her, staring down at the mother of his child with a silent, masculine intensity.
Then, he hit a knee, and drove his arrow into the earth. “Together, with the sea around us.”
Dru jumped down from his steed and adopted the same posture in front of Claire before plunging his sword into the ground and wrapping his hands around it like a knight of old pledging his fealty. “Together, with the fire within us.”
Killian likewise prostrated himself at Tierra’s feet, Death ceding to life. “Together, with the Earth below us. We are one.”
We are one.
It was the truth that had created them and would unmake them. It was the fire that would consume them. The flood that would overtake them. And the storm that would sweep them away.
The de Moray sisters turned toward Lucifer whose power battered against the shield and they chanted,
“Together with the sky above us.”
Winds redirected tidal waves while twisters and hurricanes quieted and disappeared.
“Together with the earth beneath us.”
Volcanoes receded and the earth ceased its trembling. Chasms mended and landslides rolled to a stop.
“Together with the Sea around us.”
Rain fell on forest fires snuffing them out, and the sea retreated and calmed draining from streets and overrun civilizations.
“Together with the fire within us.”
Gathering camps of marauders and looters and warlords ignited. Missiles were disarmed or detonated harmlessly. The risen undead everywhere were bombarded with fiery wrath turning them to ash.
They lowered the shield against Lucifer, and she surged forward, her darkness settling upon them, threatening to smother all light.
And still they chanted.
“We are one. We are one. We are one.”
Suddenly there were more witches chanting. Not only the ones in the coven but Melody and what was left of her minions, as well.
Beside them, in the stones, Mirelle appeared, and their father, iridescent shimmering specters of light. Malcom, Morgana, and Kenna. A woman with black hair and eyes smirked as she held onto the druid king, adding her voice to the fray. She smiled at Aerin as she chanted and Aerin knew this was Vian.
We are one.
Dozens more apparitions app
eared, then hundreds, then tens of thousands, women in every form and time of dress spreading over their hill, the peninsula, The continent. The world.
We are one.
The spirits of every woman burned in fires for her knowledge, spurned for her body, killed by violence, sex, or villainy.
We are one.
Every woman who had ever loved, lost, hated, railed, cried, and died. Their voices ringing across the earth begging for the return of their Goddess. For the love that was lost and the time that had come.
We are one.
Everyone that had had enough. Enough. Enough violence and rage and greed and malice. Enough evil. Enough pain.
The horsemen’s armor fell away, the earth swallowed their weapons of offering. The power flowing through Aerin rushed into her mate. Her man. And then she suddenly knew that now they shared it. They had a balance. Because she had the Goddess inside her, and so did he, and they shared a God, as well. A masculine balance as well as a feminine.
Everything. This was everything.
An inhuman scream rent the chaos, sending shivers through her entire being.
When the darkness receded, Lucifer and her minions were nowhere to be seen. And Aerin knew that she’d been finally vanquished, because she couldn’t sense the evil stain on her soul any longer.
Aerin enfolded herself in Julian’s arms and then stepped back to watch as he embraced each of her sisters, tears streaming down his regal features.
He could now touch the world.
52
The celebration was like nothing Aerin had attended.
Of course, when had there, in the history of the world, been another, “Congratulations on inheriting Satan’s dark powers!” party for a one-month old?
Maybe never?
She certainly couldn’t find a banner for it.
It wasn’t the first celebration they’d had since the apocalypse, but it was fast becoming her favorite.
Mostly because she was gathered around the firepit in the de Moray gardens, seven shots into some kick ass apple pie moonshine. And, judging by how green Little Earl was getting around the gills, he was going to lose the no-puke competition, as they were the last two standing.
Well sort of standing.
“Suck it John Deer,” she slurred. “Not even Pestilence could make me puke, what makes you think these weak ass sips of swill are going to do the trick?”
However, if Dr. Lecter was going to insist on being two or three bats at a time as he circled the warmth of the fire, she was going to be mighty ill.
Red, who now sported an eye patch due to the devil’s douchebaggary, leveled half of a skeptical glare in her direction. “Who you callin’ John Deer, fancy pants? Those bourgeois thangs would drown you in the Bayou.”
Aerin shrugged. She had really no idea what John Deer (deers?) were, just that guys that looked like these cretins wore the caps and drove big machines with big motors and chopped stuff. “Y’know?” she said, downing her eighth shot and waiting for the liquid fire to strip her esophagus. “Y’aren’t so bad when you’re not eating vermin and copulating with livestock.”
“Don’t make me weep, woman!” Mookey’s voice broke over his yodel. “I done explaint to you already, t’weren’t never meant to be, me and y’all. I belong to the crawdads and you to the city. My soul—belch—is like a bayou.” He held his hand out as if it contained Yorick’s skull from Hamlet.
“Full of muck and decay?” Aerin asked, swatting her hand past her nose as the gastronomical stink cloud of garlic and intestine-based sausages reached her across the fire pit.
“Spread over several states, not belonging to a one. Full of dangerous, mysterious things.”
“And dangerous critters,” Moira snarked fondly, as she came up behind them holding little Seraphine against her chest.
Mookey horked into the fire and Aerin grimaced at the sizzle.
“Can’t hog tie this catfish, is what I’m getting at.” He waggled wildly bushy eyebrows at her.
Red nodded sagely, scratching at his kidneys beneath his overalls. “Thus, are we all like. We’ll only slip away, don’t matter none how many fists you try to shove in our mouths to git us catched.”
Alarmed, Aerin looked to Moira for help.
“Still a catfish metaphor,” she said helpfully, patting little Seraphine on the back to produce her own little belch.
“Thank God,” Aerin breathed, looking on as Moira took the baby from her shoulder and rearranged her on her lap.
The child was happy and squirmy, and damned adorable in the purple onesie Julian had bought her that read, Pardon me, but I do believe I hath shat my pants beneath a picture of a waxed mustache.
Reaching out, Aerin booped little Seraphine on the nose. “You're not so bad either,” she cooed in that insufferable voice people reserve for babies and dogs. “For a toothless, drooling shit machine. No, you’re not. No, you’re not.”
Seraphine gave her a smile that sent a slimy puddle of drool dripping out of the side of her mouth.
And promptly farted.
Not to be one upped in the noxious gasses department, Cheeto belched a little flame that set Little Earl’s one good sock on fire, and he danced away to put it out in the garden fountain.
Sal leaned forward, his wizened face glowing with pride and a little ‘shine, though he’d opted out of the current contest. “Hand me the mite, Moira Jo,” he crooned. “Then you can eat with both hands.”
“Oh, I don’t have food, yet,” she said, but she passed Seraphine over to her uncle, anyhow, just before a plate appeared in her lap.
Nick, it seemed, never tired of waiting on and worshiping her. The mother of his child. The Goddess who’d gifted him with a life.
Claire drifted to the fire carrying two plates, while Dru hauled two chairs for them, and situated them closest to the flames. They settled in, and Claire passed Dru his food before accepting some moonshine from Mookey.
“See what kinda fire you start after one sippa that!” he crowed, elbowing her one too many times.
“So, you guys are leaving tomorrow, huh?” Dru said around a bite of potato salad, not exactly able to disguise his anticipation of the event.
Aerin held in a giggle as she watched him bend down to give kai a little scratch behind his red ears.
“Yup,” Little Earl intoned in his slow baritone. “Gotta check on the old place, see what damage were done to it.”
“I’ll get in contact with the local coven, if you need any help to rebuild,” Tierra offered as she and Bane brought their food over and perched on a massive log that had been converted into a bench. Violet bounced on her father’s knee, burbling and grabbing at food from his plate, her other hand reaching for the dancing tail of the black cat winding its way around his motorcycle boots.
“Obliged,” Red tipped his Hoodoo Shack ball cap as if it were a top hat in a Jane Austen novel.
Aerin couldn’t contain her joy, which was such a new feeling for her.
Since the apocalypse, covens had begun popping up everywhere, many of them having already existed in the shadows. They had no need to protect themselves from judgement and evil anymore. Not because it did not still exist in the hearts of men, but because the truth of the Goddess and her power—their powers—could no longer be denied. So they used whatever powers they had to rebuild and renew.
Entire governmental systems had been dismantled in one cataclysmic night. Monuments to tyranny lost and crumbled. Forests had taken back land, the sea had reclaimed its reefs, and air now sparkled, free of chemicals and toxins.
Mortals drew their energy from the sun now. From the moon. From the magic they’d forgotten existed.
If someone had told Aerin this was possible a year ago, she’d have told them to fuck off and wake up, because they were dreaming.
But she’d have been only half right. People were dreaming. People had always been dreaming of this. Of paradise. A world without war, without oppression and autocracy. A world where the
feminine divine was worshiped in equal measure. A world where all voices were heard and none of them marginalized. These dreamers were finally being listened to.
It wasn’t perfect. Because people weren’t perfect. But it was better. And improving with each step they made toward mercy. With each dream and imagining that became a reality.
There was no more need for Conquest, War, Pestilence and untimely Deaths. With the power of the goddess restored to the earth, the horsemen became protectors of the elements and rebuilders of a global utopia, right alongside them.
Each of the witches had their own time, their own season to reign and their own season to wane. And the balance was beautiful and right.
Their immortal mission seemed to be to protect the world from such an imbalance occurring again, and to raise children who would keep it strong from any forces who would endanger this new paradise.
It was as much a joy as it was a burden, one Aerin treasured every day.
Silent footsteps drew next to her, and the glow in her heart told her who had joined them before she even turned to look.
With a squeal of happiness, Violet launched herself from her daddy’s knee and hurled her little cherubic body into Julian’s arms.
He caught her and pulled her in for a sticky hug. “My darling,” he murmured. “What substance is draped all over your face?”
Violet couldn’t answer, of course, as whatever magic had sped up their gestation and growing process seemed to have waned since the defeat of the devil. Perhaps, because they were no longer needed in great haste, they would be blessed with a childhood.
Julian pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket, licked it, and wiped at the squirming angel’s sticky mouth while she tried to gnaw on him.
Aerin told herself her vision blurred because of the booze, not real emotion, as Pestilence, the man who could know the touch of no other without deathly consequences, gave Violet a very ungentlemanly raspberry on her round belly.
It had all been worth it. For this moment. For this family. For this love.
Who knew what eternity meant or how long this place could last?
But for now, they had the chance to live in a reality that had once only been a dream.
Which Witch is Willing? (The Witches of Port Townsend Book 4) Page 27
